The Blinne Blog

A Good Match

CNet is reporting that

Musicmatch on Monday announced its entry into the digital song-selling business, and sources say PC maker Dell will be one of the first companies to promote the new download service to consumers.

As previously reported, the Internet music software company's service, which will provide a new online rival to Apple Computer's iTunes and to BuyMusic, uses the popular Musicmatch Jukebox software and is distributing music in Microsoft's Windows Media format.

I am a subscriber to PressPlay and I also stream using MusicMatch. So, I tried out the new MusicMatch and even this early it looks like we have a winner. The integration is good with their streaming music service. What is best about this is that you can easily explore artists and genres. PressPlay's interface is a whole lot clunkier. BuyMusic.com? Forget it. This looks like the best (legal) solution for Windows users, so far.

In Memory of Valerie Joy Blinne

Three years ago this weekend, tragedy fell on our family. We had a stillborn daughter due to an umbilical cord accident. Such events change you, forever. The pain never goes away. It comes and goes and it is not so intense but it is still there as an aching throb. Many well-meaning people try to make it so that we are not in pain. But, the pain serves a useful purpose. Ask anyone with Hansen's Disease (leprosy), the inability to feel pain is deadly. First, we are reminded by our pain of the love we had for the daughter we never met. Second, the pain allows us to minister to others who are in pain. God doesn't despise but rather seeks the soul that cries out in pain. In fact, Jesus calls those who mourn as blessed.

These are the lessons I learned from the daughter whom I never met.

A Father's Love

This is what I said at Valerie's funeral. I believe it more now then when I said it. It only took me fifteen minutes to write this. In it I see more of what I am now than what I was prior to my daughter's death.

Our family wishes to express our heartfelt thanks for the overwhelming support we have received from our family, friends, and our church. It means more than you can possibly imagine. What I am about to say is the most difficult thing than I ever have had to say in my life. When I have been to other funerals, families and friends talk about their experiences with the person who has died. I have had no such experience. All I have is the experience of loss.

But this experience has caused me to ask myself several questions. Our daughter Hope after she found out that Valerie died told us that she would die for her. Would I do the same? Yes, I would. Would I be able to accept my loss with what some have called Christian resignation? I don’t know how right now, but I believe with the help of the Holy Spirit and my Christian friends I could some day. But now the final question. Would I voluntarily give up my dear little Valerie for someone I do not know? No, I could not do that. I simply do not have enough love. I want to cling on to her, even right now, but I can’t. The only reason I can do what I am doing now is because I have no choice.

Having lost my child has given me new insight into the incredible love of God our Father. How many of us glibly quote John 3:16? I will do so but more slowly. For God so loved the world that he GAVE HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON, that whosoever believes in him shall have eternal life. God love’s is not my love. Again, GAVE HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON. I would not give up my second daughter, let alone my only son. But that is what God does. The Apostle John not only says that God loves but that He is love. God was willing to experience the loss of his only begotten Son to save us from this sin-sick world -- the kind of world where Valerie dies in the womb and our family is left with empty hands and empty hearts. God loved us so much that he sent his Son to die so that Valerie might be saved immediately from this world of sin and misery. Later, we will be re-united with her, where Scripture tells that all our tears will be wiped away. Not only is God’s love more pure than ours it is also more powerful. My desire is not that I want to be made stronger or that I might be comforted. I want my daughter back! You know that. And if your love for my family and me could make it so, I WOULD have my daughter back. But this is not Oz. We do not click our ruby slippers three times and find ourselves back in Kansas. God’s love on the other hand accomplishes what it sets out to do. The love that He bestows on us WILL lead us Home.

I do not claim to have all the answers. In fact, I know very little. I do not know why this happened. I do not know how my family or myself will get through this. But, I do know the character of my loving, heavenly, Father. He experienced far more loss than I am feeling right now when he sent his Son to die for me. And it is to that loving, fatherly, care that I entrust the soul of my dear little Valerie.

A Mom's Perspective

Here's what my wife, Rhonda, said about her experience in losing a child and the hopes and fears of having another child soon after.

May I see the raised hands of you women who remember participating in “Show and Tell” in elementary school? . . . Now I have a 2nd question for you: How many of you can quote Psalm 30:5? The last half of this verse was included in the long list of verses on combating “worry” which we were given last week. “His anger is for a moment, His favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning.” Now let me introduce our family’s newest little “Show and Tell” and our “Shout of Joy.”. . . 7-week-old Angela Christine Blinne.

Angela has 3 older siblings plus 2 miscarriages I have had. Hope is 9 ½, Samuel is 7 and Valerie, our full-term newborn, was stillborn a little more than a year ago. When Judy Spaulding called me and asked if I would like to share my testimony, I agreed and told her that the focus of my talk would be centered on Valerie’s death and the Lord’s goodness and blessings in my life since that time.

Valerie Joy was 4 days past her due date on Sept. 27, 2000. That afternoon she died within me as a result of 2 “true” knots in her umbilical cord. When I hadn’t felt her movement for about 3 hours, our family raced to my obstetrician’s office to determine if Valerie was in danger. At the office the OB determined that Valerie’s heart was no longer beating.

Obviously, Rich and I were heartbroken. However, the most difficult part of this experience was our having to bring Hope and Samuel into the exam room and tell them that Valerie had died. Hope, age 8 ½ at the time, was devastated. In a very real sense, she was looking forward to Valerie’s birth even more than Rich and I were. To her, a new baby sister meant “all fun.” My husband and I knew that along with the “fun” comes a lot of HARD WORK. Samuel honestly did not understand what was happening.

We made the decision that I would enter the hospital later that evening and be induced to deliver Valerie naturally rather than a C-section. First, we went home, collected our things and notified some friends and family. Within just a few minutes of making a few phone calls, several of our closest friends arrived at our home to surround us in prayer. Two of these women later followed us to the hospital. This kind of news spreads like wild fire. A number of phone calls from other well-meaning friends and family members before we left for the hospital assured us that we were being enveloped in prayer.

When we arrived at PVH about 9:00 p.m. we were greeted by several more of our women friends and our pastor. This brother and sisters in the Lord wrapped us in love and prayer until almost midnight. They went home to catch a little sleep.

Since medication was not an issue in interfering with Valerie’s well-being, I was administered an epidural at the 1st onset of pain. She was born at 5:22 a.m., Thursday, Sept. 28, a perfectly-formed, whopping 8 lb. 2 oz! (The largest birthweight of our 4 children). Within an hour our women friends and pastor returned to the room to share in our sorrow. One of these women had the foresight to know that we would probably want a lot of photos taken to cherish as memories later. In the midst of our great sorrow, the room became literally a photography studio! I cannot begin to describe the sense of God’s presence and peace which we felt even as we were ALL crying out to the Lord to heal our hurt. Hope and Samuel arrived with the babysitter in order to see and hold their baby sister. All of us—friends included—took turns cradling Valerie until Allnutt Funeral Services arrived about noon and took Valerie away.

In God’s providence, He had blessed us with incredibly competent friends who took it upon themselves to help us with all sorts of details: everything from communication to housing to funeral and luncheon preparation. Even after Valerie’s death, we continued to receive frequent phone calls, cards and meals for over a month.

As I look back on this pregnancy, I can see a number of ways the Lord was preparing me even then for Valerie’s death. For one thing, verse 12 from Psalm 90 which tells us to “number our days” came to my mind often during the pregnancy.

After Valerie’s death, I was flooded with a number of different emotions, including anger at God. I felt angry because I was robbed of having a healthy daughter, especially since I had had a physically painful pregnancy with severe sciatica in both hips. Also, this trial seemed “unfair” because I was already 41 and my chances of having another healthy newborn were slim. But even stronger, was my anger toward the Lord because I was afraid that Valerie’s death would totally destroy the Christian faith in Hope and Samuel which Rich and I had worked so hard to instill.

Yet, as always, God’s ways are higher than mine. Hope has since told me that Valerie’s death actually prompted her to make a true conversion to Christ rather than her faith based on the fact that she was being reared in a Christian home. Do you remember that Samuel didn’t understand Valerie’s death initially? Well, since then he has tried to make sense of the situation by frequently talking about what the angels in heaven are doing with Valerie. (Eg. The angels are taking her to the girls’ bathroom. . . Valerie is sleeping on the top bunk with the angels, etc.) In fact, Samuel’s frequent discussions about angels prompted us to call our new little one “Angela.”

I could tell you story after story how the Lord has shown us evidences of His everlasting love and care for us. Of course, the biggest one has been the birth of Angela less than 11 months after Valerie’s death. Let me take a moment to mention just one story. First, let me say that I have discovered that I can never underestimate the means which the Lord will use to accomplish His purposes.

As part of my healing, I helped volunteer a couple of days a week at the preschool class which Samuel had attended the year before Valerie’s death. I soon discovered that the teachers needed my help as much as needed their emotional support. One of the students in the class was a severely disabled 6-year-old girl who had the capacities of a 3-4 MONTH old. Although a trained occupational therapist had been hired to work with the student one-on-one, I was given the opportunity to “work” with her too. Holding this little girl, massaging her arms and legs and doing anything else with her the teacher asked me to do, helped heal my broken heart more than anything else I did or anyone has said to me.

I am humbled by the incredible support system the Lord has given me. This support has NOT been limited to my closest spiritual comrades prior to Valerie’s death. As in the case of the little girl, some of the best help has come from some of the most unexpected sources,

More than ever, I am firmly convinced that my true hope must be in Christ alone. The death of a child is so horrific that it can bring a sense of utter hopelessness to those who don’t know the Lord. Even in my moments of deepest pain, the Lord has spared me from falling into the abyss of hopelessness. I have complete confidence that one day I will be able to see my little Valerie again.

A Shot in the Dark

Yesterday's Nature is reporting a strategy to learn more about dark energy

[CHICAGO] For five years, cosmologists and theoretical physicists have been wrestling with the bombshell discovery that a mysterious entity called 'dark energy' may be responsible for two-thirds of the energy and matter in the Universe.

Researchers are today no closer to defining dark energy, although they rely on it to explain the 1998 discovery that the Universe's expansion is accelerating, rather than slowing down under the influence of gravity, as had been widely assumed.

But they are at least closer to forging a plan to track it down. Last week, cosmologists met at the University of Chicago to hammer out a strategy to perform surveys of distant space that should glean more information about dark energy.

The plan involves constructing as many as 15 telescopes, including one in Antarctica, to work with existing ones in a bid to track thousands of clusters of galaxies. By looking at the distances between them, cosmologists hope to learn more about dark energy, which seems to make itself felt only between massive objects on a huge, intergalactic scale.

The survey will start by observing thousands of galaxy clusters up to 8 billion light years way. These clusters are observed now as they really were billions of years ago. If researchers compare the distances between these ancient clusters with those between clusters near our own galaxy — which can be observed pretty well as they are now — they may be able to establish how the clusters have been pushed apart, over time, by dark energy.

Finding and studying so many galactic clusters will be no small task, says John Carlstrom, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago who helped to organize the conference. Researchers will need to pick out clusters from the jumble of stars and galaxies in the night sky, and make precise measurements of the microwave radiation emitted by each cluster. Microwave radiation from space can easily be distorted by atmospheric water vapour, so much of the observation will be done by telescopes in very dry locations such as Antarctica.

Previous surveys of single galaxy clusters have taken several months using existing instruments, says Carlstrom. "My group has measured about 60 clusters in a decade," he says. But with more powerful telescopes and faster data processing, the time needed should fall sharply. A 3.5-metre-diameter microwave telescope due to start observations later this year in Owen's Valley, California, will do in months what used to take years, he says.

In the long term, Carlstrom's group is also planning an $18-million, 8-metre-diameter microwave telescope at the South Pole, which will be able to do the same survey in a few hours when it starts operations in about four years' time. Other groups are planning similar projects in the Atacama Desert in Chile and on the mountaintops of Hawaii.

But questions remain about the effectiveness of the approach. For one thing, clusters of galaxies are unwieldy and awkward to define. "A cluster isn't like a star — it doesn't have a well-defined edge," says August Evrard, a theoretical cosmologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Even so, Saul Perlmutter, an astronomer at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California who led one of the groups that discovered dark energy, says the survey will represent an important step forward.

Einstein Right Again

Einstein has been a roll lately in terms of his theories being proven right.  NASA's Cassini-Huygen spacecraft provides another example.

Like a commuter studying Plato on the subway, a far-flung satellite has accomplished something unusually productive while cruising to work. On its way to Saturn, NASA's Cassini-Huygens spacecraft has tested Einstein's theory of gravity to unprecedented precision.

In 1915, Einstein posited that gravity is nothing other than the bending of space and time. Matter and energy warp space and time, and a freely falling object travels along the nearest equivalent to a straight line in the curved spacetime terrain. Known as general relativity, this theory has become a pillar of modern physics. Even everyday technologies, such as the Global Positioning System, rely on its predictions. Yet nobody had tested the accuracy of those predictions to better than a tenth of a percent.

Now, radio signals to and from Cassini have validated Einstein's theory to 50 times greater precision, report astrophysicist Bruno Bertotti of the University of Pavia, physicist Luciano Iess of the University of Rome-La Sapienza, and engineer Paolo Tortora of the University of Bologna in Flori. They studied the signals when Cassini was on the other side of the sun from Earth. When radio waves beamed from Earth passed through the spacetime dimple created by the sun, , their frequencies shifted. The team could tell the size of the shift because Cassini responded with waves whose frequencies depended on those it received. To Einstein's credit, the shifts agreed with the spacetime-bending predictions of general relativity to within 20 parts per million, the researchers report in the 25 September issue of Nature.

The new results are a shot in the arm for gravity research, says Ronald Hellings, a physicist at Montana State University in Bozeman: "We've been waiting 30 years for a breakthrough like this." Most physicists believe that general relativity cannot be the ultimate theory of gravity, as it cannot be reconciled directly with quantum mechanics and does not account for the evolution of the universe. So high-precision tests of general relativity might reveal new forces and particles beyond gravity, says Thibault Damour, a theoretical physicist at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in Bures-sur-Yvette, France. Whatever Einstein may have missed might reveal itself in even more precise experiments already planned for other satellites, he says.

What is the meaning of life?

My church will be participating in the 40 Days of Purpose in two weeks. Here's the experience some churches in the Memphis area had with this:

Jesus fasted in the desert for 40 days.

Noah survived 40 days of floods in an ark.

Moses spent 40 days on Mt. Sinai, where God gave him the commandments.

Today, many faith seekers are discovering their own "40 Days of Purpose" through a spiritual revival sweeping the country.

Based on Rick Warren's best-seller The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?, the intensive six-week program of Bible study, worship and fellowship promises to help individuals find their true purpose in life.

In the year since Warren launched the program at his Saddleback Church near Los Angeles, more than 3,000 churches around the world have embarked on their own spiritual journeys.

Some 200 churches in Chattanooga will participate in a citywide campaign starting Oct. 4. Another 5,000 churches nationwide have signed up to take part in a campaign headed by Warren that starts Oct. 11.

Locally, at least a half-dozen churches have used the book or are planning to do so. Union Avenue Baptist Church is in the middle of its program. Central Church in Collierville plans to start in January. Bellevue Baptist Church launched its campaign Sept. 7.

"Bellevue really is looking for God to do incredible revival and renewal here," said Larry Thompson, who handles public relations for the church of 28,000 members.

The Cordova church spread the word with a publicity blitz that included TV and radio spots, newspaper ads and direct mailings.

During these 40 days, Bellevue (along with those who want to see what all the talk is about) will focus on God and finding purpose in life as a church and as individuals, Thompson said.

"The answer to all of those questions are found in the Bible; people have just been looking in the wrong places," he said.

Warren's book has become the how-to manual for those seeking answers to life's questions. And though the book is found in the self-help section of bookstores, Warren declares in the first chapter, "It's not about you." The Purpose-Driven Life has been on The New York Times Bestseller list for 32 weeks, where it reached the No. 2 spot for hardcover advice books. So far, more than 6 million copies have been sold.

At Union Avenue Baptist, deacon chairman Phil Brewer and his wife Laura Brewer have reached beyond the church membership by organizing one discussion group that meets at the Java Cabana and another at the Deliberate Literate, both in Midtown.

The groups include friends and acquaintances and people who've heard about the book through word of mouth, Phil Brewer said.

"I love it because it's getting our church group out beyond the walls of the church, especially these two in the coffee houses," he said.

The book's success surprises the 49-year-old Warren, a Southern Baptist preacher who started his ministry from his home in 1980. Today, 20,000 people worship on a typical Sunday at Saddleback, which has six services to accommodate the crowds.

Warren said he wrote the book to address the three fundamental issues that everyone struggles with in life: Why am I alive? Does my life matter? What is my purpose?

"I think this is a theme that everybody is interested in," he said in a telephone interview. "It doesn't matter whether you're a teenager, a senior citizen, or whether you're rich or poor."

Most people aren't living at their highest potential, he said. "Most people live at the survival level. They're just kind of barely getting by."

Others make it to the "success level," but are still unfulfilled, he says. "There have been a lot of books coming out saying, 'If I'm so successful, why do I still feel so unfulfilled?' "

That's because we were made for more than success, Warren says. We were made for significance, and that's the level people should strive for.

"God made us to know that we matter, and significance comes from knowing the meaning of life, knowing how much you matter to God and then to begin living out the purposes that he put us on this planet to do.

"Without purpose, life is motion without meaning," he explains. "Without a purpose life is trivial and pointless." What began as a revival among evangelical Christians has spread to 60 denominations and corporate America.

Coca-Cola, NASCAR and the LPGA have all signed on, Warren said. The Oakland Raiders football team will go through the campaign this fall, and Warren will be there for the last game of the season to lead "Celebration Sunday."

Pastor Justin Morris of the 11-month-old CenterPoint Church in Lakeland praises Warren as the "most influential evangelical leader of our generation." His church, which meets in space at Lakeland Factory Outlet Mall (formerly Belz Factory Outlet Mall), launched its own "40 Days of Purpose" last Easter.

Working through the book was life-changing for CenterPoint member Jane Vodrazka, particularly the chapter that describes how life experiences happen for a purpose.

"I sobbed when I read it," Vodrazka recalled. "It was a real healing time for me. I realized that God was looking out for me. He wanted to build my faith. He wasn't just out there dooming me."

CenterPoint member and campaign director Tony Porter was in California last year on business when Saddleback Church kicked off its 40-day campaign. He attended and came back to Memphis excited.

Still, Porter offered a warning for other churches planning to initiate the program. "This is not a formula," he said. "This is not a checklist that if I do all these things, then I'll discover my purpose. It's an opportunity to allow God to do what only He can do."

Morris said The Purpose-Driven Life is not bedtime reading.

"To benefit from the book - not just read it - it takes a pretty serious commitment. You have to be committed to some pretty serious life changes and altering your whole way of thinking," he said.

"You begin living for eternity right now. Every day you wake up, you're not living for the next 24 hours or the next 24 years: You're living in eternity right here and now."

Can you hear me now?

Wired News is commenting that 'Push-to-Talk' Spreading Fast

If you think drivers yammering on their cell phones are annoying, wait until another wireless service already popular among business users becomes even more prevalent in public: instant, two-way walkie-talkie chatter.

The radio technology frequently used by police officers, truckers, taxi drivers and IT managers is coming to many cell phones near you. All the major wireless carriers, which plan this year to join leader Nextel Communications in rolling out nationwide cell-phone walkie-talkie -- or "push-to-talk" -- service, have said the feature is not just for businesses. It's for everyone, from men radioing their wives from the bread aisle of the supermarket to teens arranging meetings with friends in the schoolyard. At least one company, fastmobile of Chicago, sells software to let people instantly connect with friends around the world.

Maybe there is something to this. I remember the CB craze in the late '70s. Maybe there might be a resurgance of two-way radio now that you can reach all the way around the world.

See ya on the flip side. This is the supernova, KXV-0821, goin' 10-7.

Luther, the Movie

Here's a review of the upcoming movie, Luther. It sounds like this will be entertaining without being preachy or heavy-handed. The movie releases on September 26. Anyone who has seen this, please leave your review here.

At one important point in the movie LUTHER, a wonderful, entertaining historical drama about the life of the 16th Century Protestant reformer Martin Luther, Luther admits to the German Emperor that he may have been too harsh when attacking some of the Roman Catholic leaders. Later in the movie, in fact, he realizes, and painfully regrets, that some of his actions in support of controversial ideas have led to many deaths during the peasant revolt in Germany, which was inspired by his writings and fed by the intemperate zealotry of some of his supporters.

At the same time, however, the Luther presented by this movie returns several times to the central issue that occupied his mind, and changed the world: the primacy of God’s Word, the Bible. “Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason. . . I will not recant,” Luther tells the German and Catholic authorities accusing him of heresy. “My conscience is captive to the Word of God.” For history tells us it was the demands of study for academic degrees and preparations for delivering lectures as the teacher of biblical theology at Wittenburg University that led Luther to study the Scriptures in depth. His study of the Bible, the source of Christianity, convinced him that the Church had lost sight of the central truths of the faith: Sola Scriptura!

The movie LUTHER covers the early years of Martin Luther’s life, from his days as a monk in the early 1500s to the proclamation of the Augsburg Confession in 1530, which founded the Lutheran Church in Germany. It begins with the thunderstorm that led Luther to cry out to St. Anne, the patron saint of miners like his father, “Help, St. Anne! I’ll become a monk.”

At the monastery, Luther is wracked by guilt because he feels completely unholy in the face of the God of Justice. His mentor orders him to pursue an academic career to relieve the strain. Soon, however, the young theology teacher is trying to correct the corrupt Catholic Church in Rome, whose corruption Luther saw first-hand. He begins teaching his students and the people in Wittenburg about the mercy and compassion of God, while complaining about the Church selling forgiveness of sins to the people for money.

All of this angers the Pope and many of his officials, who are trying to collect money to build St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. They charge Luther with heresy, and the climax of the first half of the movie occurs when Luther refuses to renounce his writings, unless convinced by Scripture.

Joseph Fiennes does an excellent job of portraying this revolutionary historical figure, whose Protestant Reformation clearly led to the founding of America and the establishment of representative government in both England and the United States. Although he appears to be a bit too thin and young by the end of the movie, there are surviving portraits of Luther from the early 1520s when most of LUTHER takes place which approximate Fiennes’ features. Supporting Mr. Fiennes, as Luther’s supporter, Prince Frederick the Wise, is the legendary, always enjoyable Peter Ustinov, star of such classic historical movies as SPARTACUS and the great QUO VADIS.

Director Eric Till, who also did the MOVIEGUIDE® Award-winning TV program BONHOEFFER: AGENT OF GRACE, does a marvelous job of capturing the settings and atmosphere of 16th Century Germany and Italy. The movie is engrossing throughout, even though the high points and climax in the second half of the movie don’t match the powerful drama of the scenes where Luther refuses to recant.

MOVIEGUIDE® can find little or nothing wrong, factually speaking, with the historical portrayal of this part of Luther’s life, but LUTHER is told from a Lutheran, Protestant viewpoint. Hence, the movie may offend Roman Catholics, especially when Luther cracks some jokes about the Catholic leaders he opposes, including Pope Leo X. The ending of the movie also has one cardinal complaining, at Leo’s death, that, if Leo had been more like Luther, perhaps Roman Catholicism could have been reformed. Of course, after Leo’s death, the Catholic Church did indeed undergo reform within the movement known as the Counter-Reformation.

LUTHER clearly shows that Martin Luther’s career led to an increased respect for the mercy of God and the importance of God’s Word, the Bible. It also informs viewers, in an end credit, that Luther helped spread a new understanding of religious freedom throughout Europe. This is true, but only to a certain extent, because, for the next 150 years or so after Luther’s death, Europe was gripped by religious wars in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. In other words, a schism in a church can be an awful thing, especially when it leads to violence, although we are called by Scripture to stand for the Truth when absolutely required.

Regrettably, the movie says little about the other great foundation of Lutheran and Protestant belief – that each and every Christian is saved, and justified or declared righteous, by God’s grace through faith, not by works. This is a failing in LUTHER, even though the movie correctly and boldly stresses faith in God through Jesus Christ.

In the final analysis, LUTHER is must watching, because it shows, in a compelling and dramatic fashion, how Luther’s faith in God changed the history of the world. LUTHER is an entertaining, powerful portrait of the Truth which people of all faiths will appreciate and enjoy. It is one of the best movies of 2003.

Another Tale Of the Tape

The AP had the following story about an unruly passenger.

Los Angeles - Airplane passengers subdued and then duct-taped a man who was pacing the aisle and reading loudly from the Bible during a flight from Hawaii, police and witnesses said.

No one was injured, and the man was handed over to authorities after the plane landed at Los Angeles International Airport early yesterday, said Sgt. Carl Sansbury of the airport police.

Brian Eager, 36, of Austin, Texas, was held for 72 hours to undergo a psychological examination, FBI Special Agent Matt McLaughlin said.

Sansbury said he didn't know what prompted the outburst on the United Airlines flight from Honolulu. He said the FBI was investigating.

Passengers and a federal immigration and customs agent who was traveling for personal reasons helped restrain Eager, but he managed to slip out of handcuffs, McLaughlin said.Eager could face a federal charge of interfering with a flight crew, Sansbury said.

Here's some questions I have:

1. We have people that cannot handcuff suspects protecting our borders?
2. You can bring duct tape on a plane?
3. How did they cut the tape if people aren't allowed fingernail clippers?

I am feeling very insecure now.